Long story short my roommate was driving my car home when the car stopped working properly. It was towed to our place. When I try to start it it has trouble starting, like something is holding on to it.

It does start but then it sounds like metal is getting pushed around by the flywheel and the clutch petal is dead (wont come back up). I had the clutch petal bracket replaced 4 months before the recall.

My question is do clutches shatter and would that be the noise I am hearing? The transmission is in neutral and even with the clutch stuck down it will not go into gear.

second question. Has any one tried one of these?

 

Yes clutches can shatter, usually from extreme abuse... You won't know exactly what it is until you pull the transmission. You can try taking the starter off to see if you can get a peek at it but that's about it.

Also yes, people have tried those clutches. I haven't heard of any failures but I don't see any with a good amount of mileage on them either. It's up to you, would you trust a 130 dollar POS clutch spinning at 9,000RPM?

If the clutch is toast I would suggest something more along the lines of this: Exedy Racing - Stage 1 Organic Clutch Kit

Exedy makes the stock RX-8 clutch and the Stage 1 is a little cheaper than the OEM replacement one that they have.